Freedom Class Reconstruction

Introduction

We know from the Star Trek Fact Files that the
Freedom class is supposed to be a Galaxy-era ship design with only one nacelle.
The USS Firebrand of the Freedom class was supposed to appear in the Wolf 359
debris field.

Analysis

Bernd has identified the Freedom-class USS Firebrand as the ship in the upper left corner in the total of the graveyard
scene after the Freedom schematic had been shown as a single-nacelled vessel in the Fact Files.
Actually, the Fact Files depiction of this ship seems to
be fairly accurate. Even the superstructures on the custom-made saucer
are correctly reproduced; they only seem a bit small relative to the saucer. This ship was already built with all the damage by
Greg Jein. There is definitely only one nacelle of the Galaxy type. The neck might be taken from the
Constitution, but the screen cap doesn't reveal any details. The
neck is rather thin and probably not taken from the Galaxy class.
Note that this very screen cap is not from the American TV version
where the nacelle isn't visible at all, but from the DVD where
the same scene is about half a second longer.

The Freedom saucer superstructure apparently
consists of two decks, rendering the whole ship quite large (430m long), and the
nacelle could be a full-sized Galaxy-class type in this case. The windows in the
neck in the Fact Files image suggest a smaller size of the ship, though.
On the other hand, we can't see any details on the neck in the screen cap,
whereas the two decks on top of the saucer, probably bridge and shuttlebay, are
quite clear. As Greg Jein obviously put a lot of work into the model, it is
likely that on the actual model the windows and decks are in scale to the rest. There is one image of the studio model from the TNG DVD
which may serve as a basis of future refinements of the schematics.

Masaki has created an illustration of what
has been used to build the Freedom. Greg Jein used one 2-foot Enterprise-D
studio model warp nacelle and probably a dorsal neck from the 3-foot
Stargazer studio model. The main saucer and some small parts were custom-made.

Conclusion

We have identified the Freedom-class USS
Firebrand in the Wolf 359 debris field. The depiction of the ship class in the Star
Trek Fact Files is largely correct. We assume that the actual ship has a
single nacelle of the same type and size as on the Galaxy class. This fits well
with the deck height on the saucer superstructure, and it would render the ship
about 430m long.